Trumpism has come to the city council in my town, and I think it is opening some eyes. I think it is moving people who were more traditional liberals farther left.

It's crazy but here goes. The head of our Civil Rights Commission is a lawyer with a Phd and happens to be a strong, outspoken black woman, the only black person that is the head of any department anywhere in city government. She's been doing a great job, which means she's been a thorn in the side of the police department and other government agencies. She has had a stalker for months, and has reported it repeatedly to the police. One of the confrontations with the stalker finally turned violent. She defended herself but ended up with a broken foot. And the police arrested......her. They did not charge the stalker with anything. Then the terrible local paper wrote an article telling everything from the side of the police, that they had video of the incident showing she was the aggressor. They haven't released the video though. And she has plead not guilty. It was pathetic that they tried to try her in the media like that.

A couple weeks after that, the city announced they were going to eliminate the Civil Rights Commission entirely. I'm sure it was a total coincidence that they did this so quickly after her arrest. The city is proposing to replace it with a volunteer group that reports to the city council...which means it would no longer be independent. State law requires cities larger than 29,000 people to have an independent one. I have no idea how they think they can do this. But the city has eliminated other departments in recent years where the people running them were at odds with the city council. They eliminated the Levee Improvement Commission which had been around over a hundred years and now they want to eliminate this one that has been around since 1962.

There have been police officers sounding off on social media about how they hate this woman so much. Racism is discrimination + power, and that is this situation, exactly. Such a blatant and obvious display of racism is really waking people up, I think. Oh yeah, the real racists are digging in their heels, but the moderates are becoming a bit more radical. The first city council meeting where this was on the agenda was tonight. The room was standing room only, and there were more people trying to get in but the fire marshal would not let them. There were 90 minutes of public comments on this issue, zero in favor of getting rid of the commission.

Joe Pinsker: One reading of your book is that the way white parents talk about race with their children does matter, but that what you call the “bundled set of choices” they make about what types of people their children encounter every day might matter even more. Can you talk about that set of choices and what it determines?

Margaret Hagerman: I use the phrase bundled choices because it seemed to me that there were some pretty striking patterns that emerged with these families in terms of how they set up their children’s lives. For example, I talk in the book about how choosing a neighborhood leads to a whole bunch of other choices—about schools, about the other people in the neighborhood. Decisions about who to carpool with, decisions about which soccer team to be on—you want to be on the same one as all your friends, and all these aspects of the kid’s life are connected to the parents’ choices about where to live.

I’m trying to show in the book that kids are growing up in these social environments that their parents shape. They’re having interactions with other people in these environments, and that’s, I think, where they’re developing their own ideas about race and privilege and inequality.

Pinsker: Some of the parents in your book may see the problems with choosing mostly white neighborhoods or schools, but the explanation they usually provide for those choices is that they just want what’s best for their children. This rationale is generally considered understandable, even honorable, but can you talk about its dark side?

Hagerman: One of the things I talk about in the book is what I call this “conundrum of privilege,” which is that these parents have a lot of resources economically as well as status as white people. They can then use those resources to set up their own child’s life in ways that give them the best education, the best health care, all the best things. And we have this collectively agreed-upon idea in our society that being a “good parent” means exactly that—providing the best opportunities you can for your own child.

But then some of these parents are also people who believe strongly in the importance of diversity and multiculturalism and who want to resist racial inequality. And these two things are sort of at odds with one another. These affluent white parents are in a position where they can set up their kids’ lives so that they’re better than other kids’ lives. So the dark side is that, ultimately, people are thinking about their own kids, and that can come at the expense of other people’s kids. When we think about parents calling up the school and demanding that their child have the best math teacher, what does that mean for the kids who don’t get the best math teacher?

I have grappled with this very concept myself. We moved to Franklin County to be close to my wife's parents when we had our first child. This put us square in the middle of a white privilege utopia. I was a lot less conscious of choices like this back then. But we're pretty entrenched out there now. Kids have friends, wife teaches in the district, etc. Moving doesn't make much sense, but it eats at me a lot.

I have grappled with this very concept myself. We moved to Franklin County to be close to my wife's parents when we had our first child. This put us square in the middle of a white privilege utopia. I was a lot less conscious of choices like this back then. But we're pretty entrenched out there now. Kids have friends, wife teaches in the district, etc. Moving doesn't make much sense, but it eats at me a lot.

My public school district is a mess. My city is only like 13% minority, but the schools are about 50% minority. We have decided to stay put, but yeah, my privilege is part of that decision. I know that my wife and I will have the time to deal with problems if they come up. And I also know my kids are coming from a much more stable house than others, and my kids will likely get treated better at school since they are white. So I am not that concerned about the problems at these schools harming my kids' prospects due to all my other privileges.

For example, the % of white kids in "gifted and talented" programs is way more than 50%, and the number of minorities identified as "special needs" is also way more than 50%.

We have thought about moving across the river to Illinois for various reasons. One of the school districts over there is more like 75% minority. I have to admit that I'm thinking twice about moving there, which is sad to admit. We'd likely end up in one more like the one we are in right now (more like 50% minority) instead. But I'm tempted to say "[expletive] it" and just do it. Houses are certainly cheaper there.

A black man arrived at the entrance to the building where he lives in St. Louis late Friday night only to find himself blocked by a white neighbor who demanded proof he lived there.

“Please move, ma’am,” the man, D’Arreion Toles, says in a video he recorded of the encounter, which shows the woman with her dog on a leash standing in the doorway at the condominium complex, the Elder Shirt Lofts...

Mr. Toles posted videos of the episode on his Facebook page on Saturday and they quickly spread on social media, where the then-unidentified woman was derisively referred to as “Apartment Patty.”

Over the weekend, Ms. Mueller’s employer, Tribeca-STL, which manages real estate elsewhere in the city, said in a statement on its website that it had reviewed the video and fired her. Tribeca does not own the building where Mr. Toles and Ms. Mueller live.

“The Tribeca-STL family is a minority-owned company that consists of employees and residents from many racial backgrounds,” officials with the company, an apartment complex in St. Louis, said. “We are proud of this fact and do not and never will stand for racism or racial profiling at our company.”

Mr. Toles, who runs a marketing consulting company, urged people not to bother Ms. Mueller.

“Some people think I should have went after her more,” he said. “I’m not going to go after her. My whole purpose is to turn this negative into a positive.”

A black man arrived at the entrance to the building where he lives in St. Louis late Friday night only to find himself blocked by a white neighbor who demanded proof he lived there.

“Please move, ma’am,” the man, D’Arreion Toles, says in a video he recorded of the encounter, which shows the woman with her dog on a leash standing in the doorway at the condominium complex, the Elder Shirt Lofts...

Mr. Toles posted videos of the episode on his Facebook page on Saturday and they quickly spread on social media, where the then-unidentified woman was derisively referred to as “Apartment Patty.”

Over the weekend, Ms. Mueller’s employer, Tribeca-STL, which manages real estate elsewhere in the city, said in a statement on its website that it had reviewed the video and fired her. Tribeca does not own the building where Mr. Toles and Ms. Mueller live.

“The Tribeca-STL family is a minority-owned company that consists of employees and residents from many racial backgrounds,” officials with the company, an apartment complex in St. Louis, said. “We are proud of this fact and do not and never will stand for racism or racial profiling at our company.”

Mr. Toles, who runs a marketing consulting company, urged people not to bother Ms. Mueller.

“Some people think I should have went after her more,” he said. “I’m not going to go after her. My whole purpose is to turn this negative into a positive.”

A couple of things. I think this incident may be a little more complex than it seems. City struggling with crime, woman takes her dog out and guy walks in while she has door open, scenario plays out.

Side note, employer that fired her is one of the worst crap landlord/leasing management companies in stl. Several different management company names operating out of same location, horrific reviews, et al.

Yeah, there was undoubtedly some racial bias with the woman, but seems like mostly she is just naturally overbearing/not intuitive person. Kind of odd thing, since she clearly didn't appear threatened as she followed him up in elevator to his room. The worst of it was she purportedly called the cops on him after he fobbed his way into his apt. Seems like she should have realized she was wrong by then.

In the scheme of racist things going on in St. Louis every day, this probably rates pretty low.

Harvard University's dean of admissions has testified the Ivy League school applies different SAT score standards to prospective students based on factors such as race, but insisted the practice is not discriminatory.

Students for Fair Admissions, a group headed by legal strategist Edward Blum, sued Harvard in 2014 claiming Asian-Americans, who have the highest academic records, unfairly receive the lowest admission rate at the elite school.

Harvard University's dean of admissions has testified the Ivy League school applies different SAT score standards to prospective students based on factors such as race, but insisted the practice is not discriminatory.

Students for Fair Admissions, a group headed by legal strategist Edward Blum, sued Harvard in 2014 claiming Asian-Americans, who have the highest academic records, unfairly receive the lowest admission rate at the elite school.

Harvard University's dean of admissions has testified the Ivy League school applies different SAT score standards to prospective students based on factors such as race, but insisted the practice is not discriminatory.

Students for Fair Admissions, a group headed by legal strategist Edward Blum, sued Harvard in 2014 claiming Asian-Americans, who have the highest academic records, unfairly receive the lowest admission rate at the elite school.

Why thank you for posting this. I hadn’t realized Asians were underrepresented at Harvard. Also the wealthy.